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What has Congress wrought?  It will be some time, it seems, before there is much clarity on the positives and negatives of the health care changes that the President signed into law.  Will more Americans have regular access to good care?  Will the increased costs to the Treasury be sustainable?  Will the cost curve be bent downward while quality and coverage are improved?  

And will taxpayers, medical staff, and medical facilities be protected from involuntary participation in and support of abortion and other unethical procedures?  Will federally funded health clinics--some of them faith-based--which have now been given a large infusion of new funding and are being counted on to expand their service to low-income persons and families, eventually be forced to perform abortions as a supposed "health service"?  Well-intentioned commentators still cannot agree on whether the reforms will or will not expand US government support for abortion. That there is still no clarity on such fundamental questions despite all of the detailed attention devoted to them is itself deeply troubling.

As the reform process began, the Catholic Health Association set out 6 excellent principles for reform, including concern for the poor and vulnerable, wise stewardship of limited resources, and promoting and protecting human dignity through access to good health care.  And also this:  "Pluralism:  The health care system should allow and encourage involvement of the public and private sectors including voluntary, religious and not-for-profit organizations, and it should respect the religious and ethical values of patients and health care providers alike."  ("Our Vision for U.S. Health Care"--find it here: http://www.catholichealthcare.us/).

Will a pluralism that deeply respects the roles and commitments of faith-based hospitals and clinics, and religious doctors, nurses, and other professionals, be a structural feature of the reformed health care and health insurance systems?  The reform process seemed to be mainly a quarrel between "more government" and "less government," with attention given to conscience and life and faith only because a few legislators pushed hard and could not be entirely ignored.  But pluralism and religious freedom should be--should have been--fundamental considerations, not bargaining chips.

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In this time of continued economic stress, charities face increased demand for their services while many of their donors have cut back their contributions.  The helpers themselves need more help, not less.  That's an important message for private givers.  And also for governments, which provide a major source of funding for many faith-based and secular charities.  But governments are also financially stressed and are typically cutting, rather than increasing, the support they give to charities.  

That is a short-sighted policy, as a recent commentary at Delaware Online points out: 

"Many of these groups are distributing services that the government otherwise would have to perform for people with special needs or low incomes.  Why, then, aren't cutbacks or changes in state funding properly researched before being implemented?  We ask for environmental-impact studies before ground is broken for buildings. Why can't there be a social impact study before imposing Medicaid rules that shift costs to the nonprofits? Why create a new problem while trying to save another?"

(Hat tip to Karen Woods.)

More on this topic:

The Poverty Forum calls for a charitable donation tax deduction for non-itemizers: http://thepovertyforum.org/resources.php

The President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships recommended several ways that governments could ease the financial stress on their charity partners, such as increased funding for particular services, temporarily suspending grant match requirements, and ensuring prompt reimbursement for services rendered to the needy. Go here for the report: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ofbnp-council-final-report.pdf.  See pp. 11-14 for these recommendations.

Independent Sector recently held a briefing about the increasing calls for governments to ease their own financial difficulties by imposing new taxes and fees on charities and foundations.  For more information go to: http://independentsector.org/members/call_nonprofits_at_risk.html

The Alliance for Charitable Reform sent a letter to the President asking him not to go through with his budget plan to reduce the charitable deduction for wealthier taxpayers.  See the letter here: http://acreform.com/article/dear_mr._president_save_the_charitable_deduction/

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Rich Stearns, Nathan Diament, and Vashti McKenzie, all members of the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, published an op-ed on March 16th pointing out the vital work done here and abroad by faith-based organizations in partnership with government.  If that work is to continue, the government must continue to protect the freedom of the faith-based organizations to maintain their distinctive practices, including their practice of taking account of religious commitments when selecting staff.  The President should reject the loud cries to restrict faith-based service and faith-based hiring.
 
"Don't all mission-driven organizations recruit and hire those who embrace their values and mission? . . . Faith-based organizations, whether Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim, compelled by their shared mandate to serve the down-trodden, are at the forefront delivering social services around the globe.  They don't discriminate against those they serve--so let's not discriminate against them."

Stearns is president of World Vision.  Diament directs government affairs for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.  Bishop McKenzie is with the AME Church.

The op-ed was published in The Hill.  See it here: http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/87149-saying-no-to-people-of-good-faith

Still Free to Serve?
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A state-issued license is a requirement to practice in many professions, and passing a course of study approved by a private accrediting association (and then complying with the association's code of conduct) is typically a requirement of having the license.  Faith-based organizations that employ professionals such as counselors, marriage therapists, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, and many others, are thus at the mercy of the standards upheld by those accrediting associations:  without licensed professionals they often cannot offer certain services, and the professionals cannot get the licenses without abiding by those standards.  

Alas for both faith-based organizations and faithful professionals:  many associations are asserting accreditation requirements and code of conduct standards that conflict with the convictions held by many religious people concerning sexuality, human relations, and social justice.  And the associations too often have little desire and make few efforts to accommodate those religious views.  Unless these trends are reversed, many faith-based professionals and faith-based organizations will find themselves marginalized, unable to offer professional services.  And the many persons and families in need who seek professionals who share their religious commitments will be unable to get suitable services.

Here's a look at disturbing trends within the marriage and family therapy profession-coupled with good news about efforts to maintain religious freedom within the association:  Kathleen Gilbert, "Gay 'Marriage' Activists Forcing Pro-Family Views Out of California Therapist Association," March 15, LifeSiteNews.com.

Hounding the Scouts?
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Vermont Governor James Douglas' proposal to allocate $7,500 to the Boy Scouts to organize a Veterans Day parade--neither the allocation nor the parade are new--has come under fire by activists who claim that it amounts to a public subsidy for discrimination, since the Boy Scouts do not accept openly gay or lesbian persons as troop leaders.  The activists demand a stop to the funding, calling on lawmakers to "consider the diversity of all Vermont families in future policy decisions."  The Vermont Senate president agrees with the activists, saying that taxpayer dollars should not support organizations "that aren't inclusive of all of Vermont's citizens."  One activist condemned the Scouts' policy for excluding some who want to join:  "These are parents and children and people who want to be involved in doing community service and contributing positively to the community and they're not being allowed to."

Apparently, truly honoring the "diversity of all Vermont families" means downplaying the religious convictions of many Vermonters about what families should be like.  Apparently the state will have to stop its support for many kinds of organizations--the nurses' association, fraternal police and firefighter groups, and hundreds of others, because none of them are "inclusive of all Vermont's citizens."  And, apparently, there is no freedom in Vermont for citizens to create new organizations corresponding to their own beliefs, organizations through which they can "be involved in doing community service" and can "contribut[e] positively to the community."  

Or maybe the activists simply want to undermine a genuine do-good group because it doesn't reflect the activists' own convictions?  Which exemplary organization will be the next target?

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On March 27th, President Obama recess-appointed Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown law school professor, to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission.  (The President resorted to the recess appointment process for Feldblum and 14 others because action on their nominations has been held up in the Senate; unless the Senate goes on to approve these nominations, the appointments will lapse at the end of the current congressional session.)

Prof. Feldblum is notorious for having said, a few years ago, that when sexual liberty conflicts with religious liberty, "I'm having a hard time come up with any case in which religious liberty should win."  "Sexual liberty should win in most cases.  There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because that's the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner."  

This conviction about the inevitability of clashes in which sexual liberty should trump religious freedom, with no way to preserve the high value the Constitution accords to the free exercise of religion, is especially troubling in an appointee to the EEOC.  The EEOC is the federal agency that oversees federal employment law, including Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Title VII, among other things, forbids secular employers from discriminating against employees and potential employees based on religion--but it includes an exemption so that religious organizations can take account of religion when hiring employees.  The EEOC will also be responsible for overseeing ENDA, the proposed federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act, if it becomes law.  ENDA would outlaw job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (transgender), but it also includes an exemption for religious organizations.  

Yet, for these exemptions to be meaningful, the EEOC has to be vigilant in protecting the religious freedom of religious organizations, and not only safeguard the rights of employees.  

The quotes from Prof. Feldblum come from Maggie Gallagher,  "Banned in Boston:  The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty,"  The Weekly Standard, May 15, 2006. 

See also Chai Feldblum, "Moral Conflict and Liberty:  Gay Rights and Religion," a paper prepared for a Becket Fund conference. This paper has been expanded into "Moral Conflict and Conflicting Liberties," in Douglas Laycock, Anthony Picarello, and Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds., Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty:  Emerging Conflicts (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

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A March 30th post at GetReligion.org (the invaluable website that monitors how the press understands the religious dimension of the news) notes a recent front-page story in the Chicago Tribune headlined "Charity ripped for 'hire' calling."  The story is about World Relief, a Christian organization, that, among other services, gets federal funds to resettle refugees.  To the surprise of the newspaper, World Relief requires employees to be Christian.  This is obviously discriminatory and obviously raises serious questions about that federal funding, the paper proposes.  

However, as the GetReligion post says, the Tribune could have instead considered the religious freedom angle, using language like this:

"Recognizing the need of faith-based organizations to maintain an atmosphere of shared values and principles, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permits them to hire based on religion. . . . Grounded in evangelical faith, the Baltimore-based organization receives up to 70 percent of its funding from government sources, with the rest from private donors, including churches seeking assurances that the religious values of those carrying out the agency's work are similar to their own.  Staff members at the agency also say the work they do can be stressful and so they pray during meetings to help ease that stress--a practice they believe might make non-Christians uncomfortable."

Hmm.  That throws a different light on the topic, doesn't it!  Those sentences, as it happens, are from another news story about World Relief's hiring policy--from the Seattle Times.

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For a few years, Congress (which maintains considerable control over the national capital city) has allocated funds to the Washington, DC, government to operate a school-choice program, providing the chance for some kids and their families to obtain a decent education by going outside the public school system (which, despite many charter schools and an energetic, reform-minded, head, continues to have many failing schools).  That program, the DC Opportunity Scholarship program, has been on borrowed time ever since the Democratic Party took over Congress.  A negative Senate vote a few weeks ago was just the latest nail in the coffin.

The Washington Post (!) hopes for a rescuer.  Here's the first paragraph from its March 23rd editorial one in a string of supportive editorials:

"PARENTS LOVE IT. Students benefit from it. But neither the White House nor most Democrats in Congress had the backbone to support a unique program that provides vouchers to low-income D.C. families in search of better educational opportunities. Now the question is whether D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D)--who has made education his priority--has the guts his party leaders lack and will seek to save this worthy program."

Not the usual posture for a liberal newspaper.  But the voucher story is important even beyond enabling some poor DC families to do what rich DC families routinely do:  pick a good school for their children.  Vouchers are a vitally important alternative to the government's usual funding mechanisms: grants and contracts.  With vouchers (also certificates, scholarships), it is the parent or person in need who gets to choose the organization that will provide the service.  Choice allows for a better match between need and supplier.  

More than that:  because it is the person in need, not a government official, who picks the supplier, that supplier organization can offer, on the taxpayers' dime, services that include religious activity!  With vouchers and other "indirect" funding methods, faith-based organizations can use the government money to pay for faith-based  services.  That's an important alternative to grants and contracts, where religion has to be kept separate from the government-funded services--even though faith-based organizations can accept these funds while continuing to offer religious activities (separately from the government-funded services).

Congress should be funding more, not fewer, voucher-funded services.

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Ours is an era of deep divisions:  deep religious, ideological, and political differences that are hard to bridge.  All the more reason for leaders to work especially hard to be visibly respectful of those on the other side, and not to give in to the temptation to run down others in order to undermine their views.  We are all fallible, so while we stick to our convictions, we also need to hold those convictions with humility.  And even as we seek broad support for our particular policy agendas, we need to work constructively to accommodate the legitimate views of others.  Winner-take-all is not a fruitful attitude when our nation harbors a variety of deeply held alternative views.  

So a recently issued "Covenant for Civility" is a welcome call to respect.  Respect, of course, neither assumes nor requires agreement. Find the statement here.